In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the credit card networks American Express, MasterCard, and Visa for alleged antitrust violations. We evaluate the extent to which the recently proposed settlement between the DOJ and Visa and MasterCard (henceforth, Proposed...

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or cash) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to...

This paper summarizes and outlines some interesting issues that arose during a recent workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) on July 25, 2008. Topics addressed are the consumer adoption of new...

This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 2527, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts the private-sector payments industry...

Cash users withdraw money from automated teller machines (ATMs) to finance cash payments. However, most ATMs in the United States dispense only multiples of $20 bills. The paper first constructs a consumer's optimization model showing how the precise denomination of dollar bills available from...

The emergence of cashless stores has led several cities and states to ban such stores. This paper investigates this issue by characterizing consumers who pay cash for in-person purchases and consumers who do not have credit or debit cards. I construct a model of consumer payment choice and use...

The paper investigates the degree to which buyers choose to diversify their use of payment methods for in-person purchases. Some buyers use only one payment instrument. Others combine the use of mostly cash, credit, debit cards, and a few paper checks and prepaid cards. To each survey...

Low-income consumers are not only constrained with spending, but also with the type and variety of payment methods available to them. Using a representative sample of the U.S. adult population, this paper analyzes the low possession (adoption) of credit and debit cards among lowincome consumers...

Using a representative sample of the U.S. adult population, we analyze which payment methods consumers use to pay other consumers (p2p) and how these choices depend on transaction and demographic characteristics. We additionally construct a random matching model of consumers with diverse...

The paper investigates the reasons why person-to-person electronic funds transfers are still not very common in the United States compared with practices in many other countries. The paper also describes recent enhancements to online and mobile banking that provide account holders with low-cost...